1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a household appliance and, more particularly, to a household appliance including a two-piece fascia panel, and a method of manufacturing the two-piece fascia panel.
2. Related Art
In a related art household appliance, such as a dishwasher, fascia panels are designed with cosmetic and structural features on one piece or component. A one-component fascia panel may be secured to a door of the household appliance, and may include a variety of switches, buttons, and other controls used to operate the household appliance.
In this one-component fascia panel design, the injection molding process used to manufacture the fascia panels becomes more critical. In particular, material flow and gating cannot be optimized for both cosmetic and structural features that are required of these fascia panels. Furthermore, the gating location during an injection molding process does not allow for molding technologies such as metallic acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) or use of other metallic materials or In-Mold Decorating, for example. A one-component fascia panel design also increases complexity and costs in the manufacturing process, particularly in tool complexity.
Further, because at least a portion of the one-component fascia panel is exposed to and used by a consumer, cosmetic appearance becomes important and, therefore, higher cost materials as well as increasingly complex molding processes are used for making the one-component fascia panel. Additionally, because of the one-component design, an entire fascia panel is required to be switched out or replaced if a consumer would like a different cosmetic appearance.
The present invention overcomes the problems associated with the related art by introducing a fascia panel with a cosmetic portion and an electronics housing designed as two separate components that when joined or attached, form the fascia panel.